General
7 March, 2026
The Dairying Industry in the Texas District - History Corner
The first record of any commercial dairy production in the area is credited to the Booth family of Glendhu and Tarwoona. Miss Clara Perry of Bordalla Cheese Factory on the coast was supervisor for Booth’s cheese making venture where cheese was being manufactured for the tin mining market at Stanthorpe. Some tons of cheese were awaiting transport to Stanthorpe when the Dumaresq River flooded in 1890. The cheese was destroyed, and Booths did not resume their factory.
With the subdivision into small farms, dairying became an important industry in the area and had been carried out in the area for some time before the opening of the cheese factory by the Warwick Co-operative Butter Factory.
The factory would have been established to countermand the problem of distance and bad roads. The dairy farmer had also to contend with the hot summer temperatures and the battle to keep milk and cream cool. It was the custom to cease butter production during the hottest months. Cheese could still be made and consequently cheese factories were more practical.
The establishment of a cheese factory at Texas was first mentioned on 10 October 1905 and opened on 16 March 1909. Within three months, the factory was manufacturing 11 tons (9.98 tonnes) of cheese from 24,784 gallons (112,670.3 litres) of milk; roughly one pound (453.6 grams) of cheese to one gallon (4.55 litres) of milk2.
Prior to this, Mrs Belford of “Sunnyside” had supplied butter to the mining community of Silverspur.
Richard and Mary (nee Austin) Belford and their family had come to “Sunnyside” in 1898, and in their early days in the district conducted a dairy.
The dairy was made of slabs with an iron roof and stone floor. It was always clean and cool. There were no separators in those early days, and the milk was set in large dishes until the cream thickened on top. The cream was then skimmed with a thin tin round skimmer which had small holes for the milk to run through. The thick cream was collected and beaten into butter and made into one-pound (453.6 grams) pats.
Mary Belford would drive twice a week in the sulky to the nearby mining town of Silverspur to sell her wares of milk, butter, eggs and poultry. The Belfords were later to be the first people to own a separator and a wooden butter churn, and it must have been a wonderful time and energy saver to have these modern aids.
In 1902 there was a severe drought. Horses and bullocks were too poor to pull the drays and wagons to fetch supplies. Little food came into the district, and the people were forced to subsist on what was available such as kangaroo, rabbit, fish and wild fowl.
The surviving stock was too poor to eat. The Belfords had one cow left of their herd.
Texas Station had no meat for rations, and the men were supplied with bacon instead.
Caught with little food in the 1902 drought, the Belford men agreed they would never be found without supplies again and so would go to Glen Innes in a convoy of drays and bring back enough supplies for six to nine months: one ton (0.907 tonne) flour, half a ton (0.454 tonnes) sugar, a large tea chest of tea (56 pounds) (25.4 kilograms), a case of jam, syrup, treacle and sauce and the like.
It was during this drought that Mrs Belford lost the baby she was carrying. This story highlights the hardships and everyday problems which were part of the lives of our early pioneers, whatever may have been their occupation.
The late C W (Jake) Lennon remembered the dairying days and wrote:
In 1909, my father commenced dairying. We milked up to 60 cows a day. The cream was sent by coach owned by J Ryan Snr to Inglewood and then by train to Warwick. During the two to three years, we sent cream to Warwick, we never once had it downgraded. When the river was in flood, we carried the six (27.3 litre) or 10 gallon (45.5 litre) cans of cream across the swinging bridge – no mean feat. Later we supplied milk to the cheese factory.
The Potter family commenced dairying in Texas in 1911 and ran up to 112 dairy cows, mainly Shorthorns from Talgai. Milk was supplied to the Cheese Factory run by Bill and Cliff Godfrey, and later, after it was burnt down, the cream was sent to Warwick Butter Factory.
Daisy Blanch (nee Legge) remembers the following people as having been dairy farmers around 1915: Wrights, Schneiders, Wilcox, Austins, Rowe, Robinson and Frank Lang. Mr Joe Thompson dairied at Nicholl’s, Yetman and carted cream to Texas. Because of the distance, he changed his horses at Middle Creek.
Kevin Wolff, a former Butter Factory employee, remembers a churn of butter which was the same colour as Palmolive soap. It tasted okay. Sample bottles were taken from each lot of cream and sample lots of butter made. The result was that the green colour was caused by green aphids from a paddock at Raleigh. The green colour only appeared when the cream was churned into butter.
Some of the Factory Managers were: Messrs Rigby, Burton, McMillan, Mitchell, Buckley and Herman Wolff, who was the Manager when the Factory closed.
Ros Kahn dairied at Beebo for many years. Gordon Saunders, who worked on Kahn’s dairy for some time, recalls that the dairy farmers on the west side of Brush Creek assisted in building the bridge over the creek on the Yelarbon Road in the 1930s to enable them to keep up the cream supply in a wet season. The bridge was known as the Community Co-operative Bridge. Frank Lang remembers some of the carriers around this time were: Carl Jansen, Rob Rankin, Mr Scott and Eddie Austin.
Two men who dairied on the banks of the Dumaresq Pre-World War II were Charlie Richards and Bill Haddock. Their farms are now part of Boorandalla. Charlie Richards was the town milkman for many years.
The S C and W Co-operative Dairy Association Limited advised that a Butter Factory was operating in Texas in 1919. A factory was destroyed by fire in 1928 and rebuilt and finally closed in 1955. Many butter factories in Queensland closed around this time.
If you are interested in visiting the Heritage Centre and Tobacco Museum, we are open each Saturday for a small fee. We also welcome new members.
Contributed by Robyn Griffin
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